MITRE is a DoD child, created in the heat of the Cold War. It was and probably still is one of the best brainstorm centers in the world. And DoD loves it a lot. Besides, MITRE is one of the historic hallmarks on computer development. It was one of the organisations that tightly worked with ARPA in the 60's. So, in some way they can be the aunties of Internet. Many other things we use today were also developed by MITRE. So DoD will probably listen to its giant child.
You didn't get the point. The problem this report tries to cover is not about costs but about the ability to control the software you use. And that's the what DoD is concerned about. And the report notes that DoD is damn dependent on FOSS:
The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more critical role in the DoD than has generally been recognized. FOSS applications are most important in four broad areas: Infrastructure Support, Software Development, Security, and Research. One unexpected result was the degree to which Security depends on FOSS. Banning FOSS would remove certain types of infrastructure components (e.g., OpenBSD) that currently help support network security. It would also limit DoD access to and overall expertise in the use of powerful FOSS analysis and detection applications that hostile groups could use to help stage cyberattacks. Finally, it would remove the demonstrated ability of FOSS applications to be updated rapidly in response to new types of cyberattack. Taken together, these factors imply that banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security- focused DoD groups to defend against cyberattacks.
I don't see where your disappointment comes up. The report shows that both OSS and FreeSoftware are the major players in DoD sectors (well I would be very admired if they wouldn't). Besides, it shows that all this FUD from M$ is a national danger to the US (and I would be HIGHLY admired if it wouldn't). Apart of some gaffes the report is superb.
They refer to an ideal situation. The use of GPL soft would free completely their hands on changing every piece of soft that might be compromised. And they would not have to deal with licensing hurdles. But there are two caveats here.
First, a GPL-exclusivety would be appropriate only in top-security situations that demand a fast and very flexible response. Not having barriers on how to deal with the soft, be it binary or sourcecode is extremely important here. However, I would not be so fanatical on saying that only GPL soft is appropriate. Frankly, I think it would be better to say: licenses to do not impose barriers of any kind to software changes and distribution.
Second, to do such thing, people should be uberprofessional. Having GPL code is not enough to provide security. There should be someone who's able to manage the guns. However, if a certain department or site is considered to be top-security, then one should have someone of that weight out there... Isn't it? But... well... we know that even security guards love to sleep when they shouldn't. And that engineers are underpaid and don't have enough qualification. And that the managers will still buy some piece of crap instead of listening the experts... So this caveat is utterly pointless...
OpenBSD is one of the most secure. Because it is made for security. Most Linux machines are not because it would be a problem trying to adapt users to the level of security in OpenBSD. I made a few installs of OpenBSD and I may tell you that it is not easy to install something on it. Besides it is much harder to use. And, sometimes it is quite slower than other BSD and Linux conceptions. But it is very good on kicking every kiddie out.However, its administration demands every kind of tasks as nay other system. A badly administered OpenBSD is also breakable.
On what concerns Linux itself, unfortunately there are very few secure distros. But it is possible to reach a level of security near to OpenBSD or even better. By hand and making the system from scratch. Once we had such a machine. We named it "The Castle", out of the name of a distro that gave us the idea to make it. It was a damn well secured system. But using it... Better walking through the Labyrinth...
Some have noted that women have always had a peculiar taste to play Tetris. It is interesting to note that the most fanatic players are usually women... Well, I am completely of a different mind and always considered this game as too boring. I wondered how could people play such thing for long hours. No more. I consider the game an excellent testing system. The next time I see a girl dealing with NP-hard algorithms and crying she can't hold up, I'll play the dirty trick:
New fresh roast student - "Excuse me, but this task it's too hard for me. It deals with a NP-hard task and I don't have the brains for it... Couldn't you give a more simple task for me?.."
Me - "Well go and play some Tetris while I think how we can ease your work..."
After a few hours - "Well what's the score? And you say NP-hard algorithms are too hard for you? You trying to solve a NP-hard algorithm for more than an hour! Cool, go and try to do the same with that task you don't have brains for..."
You people didn't catch it... The guy was afraid that the site could go down in one more of these terrible/. effects
Internet street singer
on
Ebay vs. Musician
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Frankly, this guy is just an Internet street singer... No offense. Some street singers are pretty good and even some had sometimes a chance to go into the "official" music arena.
But as with street singers, he's got trouble with the police patrols (in this case the uber-careful eBay). So they kick him, spread his meager cents all over the street and hint him to "get outta here". They don't wanna know if he's good or bad. They don't care for his music. They just wanna see the street looking antiseptic, wax shinny and without a single stain on it. For who? I don't know. Maybe they are worried about its nostalgic clients who dream to see the colors of the III Reich again?
Well, just remebered the time when journalist hunted and haunted me and my colleagues - the Y2K hype.
From that experience I learn a few things.
Journalists are in its large majority quite biased. They want the news. If they don't get hit, they start flaming.
Journalists frequently cry for freedom. But their freedom is not freedom of expression. For many of them "freedom of press" means "write whatever comes to your head".
Journalists really don't like that someone spoils their "hot news". If you don't wanna say a word they cry "censorship", if you disagree with them, they cry "propaganda". If you send them somewhere else, they cry "attacks on press".
Journalists love to write. Even if they have no material. One colleague was attacked by a series of stupid questions, sounding like Armageddon predictions. He answered "that's hype, nothing else". The journalist managed to produce an half page comment of this phrase in one newspaper telling that experts were blind and could not see what was going on.
Journalists believe they can be experts in everything. When they write about hackers or computers, most texts are more fantastic than most Holywood blockbusters.
Not all journalists are like these ones. But the sensationalist mass is the majority. During Y2K, I saw only one guy who had the head a little bit on his shoulders. Everyone else, some 6-7 idiots, were always trying to get the best prediction for Armageddon.
Ooops except one. The jerk seemed to have get pissed on something and wrote a stupid tale that the city where I live had the honour to have the NNth most dangerous hacker in the world. And told everyone who this "mega-dangerous" hacker was in some popular newspaper.. Till now people ask me about this...
So, people, don't take too close to heart this list... Frankly, I know a little bit about journalistics in some 10-11 countries and I'm terribly admired about their positions in this list.
That apathy and contentment is a real danger to democracy, because it means no one is protecting the democratic rights.
One of the founder of the US did remark this danger. Besides this is a universal danger. Such weaknesses were frequently the result why such guys like Stalin or Hitler came into power... And that's what is sending Europe again into the cauldron of extremism. That's also the danger that may turn the US into another major war in the middle future.
Well things are not bright in Russia. But putting Russia worser than certain neighbors is too much. I have been in some of these places and I sincerly consider that the report is too biased. They forget that some countries with "freedom" higher than Russia journalists are killed or have a puppet press that serves the wishes of local authorities. Besides, Gregory Pasko's case is quite scandalous. Yes, he was a journalist. But he was also an officer and he was sentenced for sharing too much military information with a foreign organisation. Besides these guys forget that most charges were dropped out and that this case still didn't end completely. Yes, it is a very dirty, but also a complex case. Did Pasko overweighted his duties as an officer while trying to to fulfill a citizen duty? That's what everyone asks about.
Has Russia Freedom of Information? It has - too much and too little at the same time. You can hear a journalist asking very hard questions to the President about the corrupt behaviour of the authorities on Tuva Republic. At the same time you see these same authorities trying to shut ip this dissident voice. On one side you see oligarchs, through their media,crying foul that there is no Freedom of Information. At the same time you see these media brainwashing everyone that they found data against Putin. The local TVs are controlled by local elites, but they are several and in every critical moment you see them fighting against each other and blackmailing the opponent.
Russia's Freedom of Information is a huge mastodon washing machine. It looks much like Alexis de Tocqueville memories on how the US lived in the XIX century.
And one more example on how information goes quite uncontrolled. Many of you may know that right now in Moscow there is a big hostage crisis going on. Well the channels gave people a chance to speak and now it is quite clear that some gave too much information over the screen... And it occurs that terrorists are also watching TV... Frankly, I don't know what level should be put to
Ok people. Those of you who say they cannot make money out of GPL. Are you something different from IBM? Are you something different from thousands of small developers and sysadmins like me? What in GPL really HAMPERS you from making some money? Technical hurdles? Where I'm in this world for nearly 10 years and I have not seen professionals crying foul from any GNU tool that would really HAMPER any chance to create a new program. Well Linux is an example of this, isn't it? Frankly I don't see where Linux may hamper you on having a decent revenue. And I don't see IBM filling bankruptcy in the next years.
You can't charge for that piece of code? Correct. Why would someone give you a 200Kb of software to help you write 2Kbs and sell the whole thing for $2000? Well that's one of the things GPL is about - don't be a parasite. And do not try to stop other people doing something with those 200Kb. Moreover, when this 200Kbs may be good taxpayer dollars.
On what concerns what should a state do with licenses. I believe that a "just GPL" license is bad. I do believe in the right of an author, or intellectual property owner to rationally choose the best form to share its product with someone else. A state may either choose GPL, BSD or an 100% commercial license, depending on conditions and circumstances that lead to the creation of the product and its potential use. However we are talking here about cyber security, right? That's what is the news about. What is the usefulness of kick out GPL from this field? I see one and only one reason. To hold up information on new security technologies. Is anyone trying to make a slippery move to make "security through obscurity" an official ideology of the US? If so, one day you americans don't blame the rest of the world for being better than you, and don't ever claim that we betrayed you, somehow. The treason is right behind your backs.
There was Corporate America. And people enjoyed to remark this. And there was a company that claimed that Linux, Open Source, GPL and Co. were a treat to Capitalism... And there was a lot of FUD, among some people, that all this was the same thing as Communism, if not worst. And they raised Corporate America in a crusade against the Spectrum. And they said: buy only true corporate software. And Corporate America felt that it would be easier to deal with a corporation, rather than risking its health and wealth with something that sounded like some old enemies calls.
Now Corporate America is eating the fruits of its short vision and its lack of support to venture capitalists, small developers and a little more freedom for people. Soon, we may see that Corporate America is no more. Welcome to M$ America.
Future warning tables in game rooms
on
Airborne Mouse
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· Score: 2
To Doom, Quake, CounterStrike watchers...
If you see that the player does not lie his hands on the table, then, don't come close. The administration takes no responsability for black eyes, broken teeth, bruises and other trauma that may advent from the fact that the player uses airborne devices...
Only to the electronics of a particular receiver that has the correct encryption and chipping key will it seem like anything else.
Interesting idea... And it could be quite truthful if a general path of progress forced civilizations to choose methods of communication with signals nearing background noises or pure white noise...
Maybe it is would be a good idea to change the project into "Hack@SETI". However this could be dangerous. Imagine an orange being carrying two antennas, glasses, dressed on a Yuppie-like fashion and crying: I'm Bell Gadzes from Migrozoft Conglomeration, Red Moon, Vaxinton System, United Empires!.. You violated our DTCA (Digital Trillion Copyright Act)!! You will be assimilated!!!
Their usual name is Utopia. They may differ in ideologies and objectives but the large majority ends quite badly.
The most ancient Utopia seems to have been the half-mytical Atlantis. The most well known Utopia of Ancient Times was Sparta. Roman Empire died to a religious Utopia of Armageddon and Salvation. In Middle Ages there were several Utopias like the Albigois of Provence, the Templars. Mongol Empire was an Utopia. American Revolutions nearly started several Utopia States, some of its remains echo till now in the US and, partially, in South America. Utah was pratically an Utopia in its first years. French Revolution was a pure Utopia State. October Revolution was the biggest, largest and most monumental Utopia ever. Nazi Germany and several other regimes were Utopias. Singapore still heirs a lot of its Utopia foundation. Apart of this. There is certain data that points to the fact that Maya could be an Utopia. Also some strange tales of a certain ancient kingdom in what is now Spain point also to an Utopia. Many eurasian tales point to vanished city-states and countries that remind a lot Utopias, ex. the Huns, the Assassins, Turan, Shambala, etc.
What was the problem of these Utopias? They could have started well and with clear ideals. However, dogmatism and fanatism overcome. They tried to remain up to their ideals no matter the conditions and realities. Some Utopias vanished quite fast and they couldn't even manage to leave anything for history. Others could live for some time, basing its force on the economical power and resources of a nation. However the large majority ended tragically. Almost all Utopias tend to isolate themselves from everything that doesn't fit their dogmas. On one point of their History, the balance between their ideals and environment was so unequal that they were simply crunched to dust. Among them, there are only a few structures that manage to survive as they started to interact with the world, ex. the Jewish-Christian-Islamic canonical religions, the modern communist parties, The United States of America, The French Republic, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China and several others. For some this may look as if a big part of our world is Utopia based. It is. However, they are just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of Utopias that Mankind rised.
Re:Is media automount in the kernel yet?
on
Linux 3.0
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· Score: 2
A. I am not the only admin in my workplace. B. The majority of admins comes from old damn good Win9x times. C. This majority has a tendency to make things MazDie alike. D. So they put autofs even in some major server. E. I have can only two hands, two eyes and two ears (well something more but that's superfluous here). F. I have one head only. And my head is frequently on heatsinker. G. Certain distros love features. Like giving supermount from start. But if its not there, the guys in B. do everything to put it.
So what do you think? I know... "#brain$ rm -rf nerves ; echo "YOU LAMERZ!!!" ; cat "Why *NIX doesn't autofs from start - 10th edition""
Re:Is media automount in the kernel yet?
on
Linux 3.0
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· Score: 4, Informative
Very unfortunate example of yours. The CD is trashed, someone inserts that piece of trash into this super-feature automount. However, this dodo, instead of checking that dumb CD, he goes take some coffee. In seconds, the machine starts to sloooooooooow doooown as the dumbish CD-reader kicks more and more interrupts into the system. True story. I drunk his cup of coffee while he ran away to KICK THAT DAMN CD OUTTA THE SERVER 'CAUSE IT IS STUCK INSIDE!!!
Other example. Mr. A. H. Wannabeahacker has an account in some machine. He inserts the super-pupper CD - CrACkZ, hACKz and SuXXs. Plays a little bit and turns the server into a washing machine. Another true story. Those who work at University computer classes may have seen this a few times...
So people. I know that the autofs features are pretty cool. I do use them. But in user workstations ONLY! The lack of automount in a desktop station is a distro problem not a kernel one. All the basic infrastructure for automount is in the kernel already. However there should be some more tweaking on it, as certain types of ZIPs, CDs and HDDs may seriously influence the performance of the kernel while being mounted. It would be great to see some some kind of double checking of errors so that certain cascades wouldn't happen.
What should be embedded into Linux kernel 3.0
on
Linux 3.0
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· Score: 5, Funny
Well, this is what some people really wish:
Internet Explorer. GUI. The Eternal Flat Desktop for dummies. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Solitaire. Palladin.NET WYSINAWYG WYGINAWYW Easter Eggs Make desktop "user ready". Forget the flame. Forget the bugs, claim the features. Add 100Kb EULA into the kernel itself. Sell it and yourself to Bill Gates. Rename it to Windows. Sell it for $400 and threaten everyone who will not follow you. Write a small text, anonymously authored - "Why I switched from Linux to Windows" and claim how your customers are deeply satisfied.
Re:Is media automount in the kernel yet?
on
Linux 3.0
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Are you from Mars? There are two versions of automount in Linux and there is something called "supermount". But if you use Linux for servers, then you are deeply wrong if you put these things into action. The automount feature is not embedded to Linux just for that reason. A good secured server should in no way give a chance to automount third party media. Only the admin should do it and he shall have a chance to do it flexibly and correctly. Believe me, that this is the true way of administration. Maybe where you work people may think it is too bad that Linux doesn't automount every piece of crap that may either trash the system or give a chance for information leaks. But, on my years of sysadmin I consider that this is one of the best features not only of Linux but of the whole *NIX family.
This guy is wrong. Deeply and completely wrong. Even if his ideas are technically achievable, he will be a step nearer death and destruction rather then achieving its goal of Eternity.
The ways he tries to achieve this goal are, by the most, static. It will be harder to modify a detail or change a component of such organism. Besides, such technologies are by too weak to external factors and demand much more energy inputs than a usual organic carbon-rich body. While it is hard for Nature, under Earth's energy balance, to create things with sources other than carbon, many organisms failed or were kicked into Evolution sideroads. Why? Because all these "solutions" were quite far from optimal. Do you know that octopus don't have hemoglobin but a magnese-based protein to fix oxygen in the blood? Or that there is a small vermin with teeth carrying more than 80% of copper? These things are exclusions, sometimes aberrations that the average conditions of Earth's habitat cannot support. These things lived isolated, in particular areas and cannot leave their environment.
Now how this comes into our problem here? Well this guy forgets more than 4 billion years of evolution and kicks us into a completely aritficial organism. But this organism lives uder what conditions? Human conditions! It is we humans that care for these silicon beings, model them according to our wishes and needs, we feed them with energy and data. Besides, till now not even Deep Fritz could approach the sensibility, reasoning and flexibility of a human. This is a machine that devores energy, that makes milliards of permutations to overcome the speed of the human brain in one single task, that is supported and developed by thousands of engineers. And someone considers this the Future? Give me a break. Dinos were a lot smarter and more autonomous.
IF something like Deep Fritz will be left alone on Earth it will meet something that even humans barely know about. The law that can be behind Thermodynamics (not the Second Principle, that thing is probably the consequence of this law) and which some biologists have been studying for several years. It is a law about how things interact. In a single system, in every moment there can be milliards of interactions between its components. Some of these interactions are antagonists, one can be successful if its antagonist gets weakened somehow. The state of equilibrium is merely a situation when these interactions meet something looking like an energetic "agreement" among themselves. However, this does not mean that interactions may disappear at all. Frequently some just turn more weak but more numerous as other components of the system "repel" these interactions, because of the more stable state they are in (this is where some people see the appearence of Entropy). However these stable states are not eternal. They may change globally or locally, and then, all other interactions may try to invade te castles of stability.
Why all this confusing bla-bla-bla? Well get a human and a machine. Make the human to improve the machine too look much like his mind. Now pick the human and shoot him, leave the machine alone in Earth. How long the machine will be capable to survive?
Even if someone achieves the feat to create an artificial mind much like ours, he will be only half-way. This minfd will need to be able to have a rational meal, to run from dangers, and to have a chance to go to toilet from time to time. Besides, this mind will have the big need to reproduce itself. Alone in the Universe does not give good chances for eternity...
So these guys pretend to be above God and/or Nature and pretend ownership of their Creation...
Interesting to see this thing coming from traditionally religious Utah... Is anyone tryng to create a new religion of The Chosen who can afford the Patented Creation that offers the Misteries of Human Genes capable to prolong Patented Life and improve Patented Health just for a miserable sacrifice of a few thousands? While The Patented Infidels will be forced to avoid touching their Patented Ills so they can meet their Patented Destiny, as they don't have a penny to pay the humble sacrifice, that is the wish of being humans?
Well tovarish, your talk sounds good for a trotskist agent of the dirty, shadowy voices of Imperialism and Capitalism. However, your voice reflects you capitalist grounds.
It is not Top Level Directorate but High Commissariate, Central Commitee, and Higher Congress. You forgot one C in CCCP (Soyuz Sovetskikh Socialistichekikh Respublik). It is not the "we are Voice of The Peoples" but we are "The People". On what concerns "largest party of politics", do you really think that we all speak English so badly? It's "largest political party".
And now sorry for the english speaking fellows but this guy tried to play so well on grumbling its Engrus that he made a very silly mistake. So directly to him:
Vy ponyali shto napisali po angliiskii? Materniui Zemlyu!.. Rodina-Mat budet "Motherland" mat vashu.
This is not new and it didn't appear yesterday. The sensitive but unclassified data has been around since the end of WWII. Well, it was here before that, but the mood turned crazy after this time. There have been lots of incidents where certain organisations or people used and abused the tactics of information control. In certain cases the incident ended in brutal assassinations of journalists, experts and other people. Such incidents could be frequently seen in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the 60's, 70's and 80's. No I am not talking about wars and coups, but about the secret experiments in certain countries, the secret american base in ex-Zaire, the defoliation in Vietnam, certain aspects of CIA activities in Central America during the Contra's War. We can even note the victims of a few nuclear incidents in ex-USSR, most of them, results of experiments. While a good part of these activities had a top-secret level, other details could not be covered by secrecy (unless you consider people like the Agent Orange victims top secret items). However, agencies tried hard to cover its tracks. Sometimes, in a very harsh manner.
But even Europe was not exempt of such situation. There is a mistery story about some major soviet expert on nuclear war that suddenly vanished in South Europe after a major scientific congress on the effects of Nuclear Winter. For years, no one and nobody could guess where this guy went to. He vaporised in such way, that both soviet and westerners constantly blamed each other for his vanishment. Some may think this was another Cold War incident. However, this guy seems to had worked on a more perfect model to represent the consequences of a major nuclear war. This work was not secret nor confidential and it seems that he was about to show it to everyone in that congress. However someone made him disappear before he could do it.
I wonder what will happen if the vague term "sensitive" becomes an official member of the secrecy levels. We could see such thing like: "Well we could tell you the number of victims of unsuccessful nuclear experiment but that's highly sensitive information."
Well there is one thing that some are ignoring. Apart of nostalgia and other problems, like lots of mail users still being in.su domain, there is another argument. Some people want to use.su for CIS sites.
Many years ago, one of my colleagues fell into a weird situation. He was quite good in Assembler and wrote some quite long program. When he finished, he said that he doubts that the program could work. "I should have done some checks before finishing it..." He compiles the program, gets ready for some long debugging and... the program works... He stares at the screen. "Something is wrong here..." "What?" I ask. "The program works...". "Well it should doesn't it?". "No, it shouldn't, no one can write Assembler in such volume and avoid errors..." "But does the program give the right result?" "Yes, but that's impossible! I nearly guessed how to do it. How can it work?.."
So he starts checking the program. Finds nothing. Debugs it, all seems to work. Then he starts to doubt that the results are correct. So he makes two three checks by hand. Then he writes a small segment of the program and things go nuts.He gets back to the whole program and starts debugging it, step by step. In the end, and after taking four times more what took him to create the program, he approaches me with some clear relief.
"There were errors..." "So the result was wrong..." "No, the result was absolutely right!" "!?!" "Well, the fact is that I did one offset wrong but in other section of the program, another error in made returned the values to normal. That's why the program worked fine..."
Slashdot Mirror
MITRE is a DoD child, created in the heat of the Cold War. It was and probably still is one of the best brainstorm centers in the world. And DoD loves it a lot. Besides, MITRE is one of the historic hallmarks on computer development. It was one of the organisations that tightly worked with ARPA in the 60's. So, in some way they can be the aunties of Internet. Many other things we use today were also developed by MITRE. So DoD will probably listen to its giant child.
You didn't get the point. The problem this report tries to cover is not about costs but about the ability to control the software you use. And that's the what DoD is concerned about. And the report notes that DoD is damn dependent on FOSS:
The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more critical role in the DoD than has generally been recognized. FOSS applications are most important in four broad areas: Infrastructure Support, Software Development, Security, and Research. One unexpected result was the degree to which Security depends on FOSS. Banning FOSS would remove certain types of infrastructure components (e.g., OpenBSD) that currently help support network security. It would also limit DoD access to and overall expertise in the use of powerful FOSS analysis and detection applications that hostile groups could use to help stage cyberattacks. Finally, it would remove the demonstrated ability of FOSS applications to be updated rapidly in response to new types of cyberattack. Taken together, these factors imply that banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and security- focused DoD groups to defend against cyberattacks.
I don't see where your disappointment comes up. The report shows that both OSS and FreeSoftware are the major players in DoD sectors (well I would be very admired if they wouldn't). Besides, it shows that all this FUD from M$ is a national danger to the US (and I would be HIGHLY admired if it wouldn't). Apart of some gaffes the report is superb.
Time to put Redmond on the rough nations list...
They refer to an ideal situation. The use of GPL soft would free completely their hands on changing every piece of soft that might be compromised. And they would not have to deal with licensing hurdles. But there are two caveats here.
First, a GPL-exclusivety would be appropriate only in top-security situations that demand a fast and very flexible response. Not having barriers on how to deal with the soft, be it binary or sourcecode is extremely important here. However, I would not be so fanatical on saying that only GPL soft is appropriate. Frankly, I think it would be better to say: licenses to do not impose barriers of any kind to software changes and distribution.
Second, to do such thing, people should be uberprofessional. Having GPL code is not enough to provide security. There should be someone who's able to manage the guns. However, if a certain department or site is considered to be top-security, then one should have someone of that weight out there... Isn't it? But... well... we know that even security guards love to sleep when they shouldn't. And that engineers are underpaid and don't have enough qualification. And that the managers will still buy some piece of crap instead of listening the experts... So this caveat is utterly pointless...
OpenBSD is one of the most secure. Because it is made for security. Most Linux machines are not because it would be a problem trying to adapt users to the level of security in OpenBSD. I made a few installs of OpenBSD and I may tell you that it is not easy to install something on it. Besides it is much harder to use. And, sometimes it is quite slower than other BSD and Linux conceptions. But it is very good on kicking every kiddie out.However, its administration demands every kind of tasks as nay other system. A badly administered OpenBSD is also breakable.
On what concerns Linux itself, unfortunately there are very few secure distros. But it is possible to reach a level of security near to OpenBSD or even better. By hand and making the system from scratch. Once we had such a machine. We named it "The Castle", out of the name of a distro that gave us the idea to make it. It was a damn well secured system. But using it... Better walking through the Labyrinth...
Some have noted that women have always had a peculiar taste to play Tetris. It is interesting to note that the most fanatic players are usually women... Well, I am completely of a different mind and always considered this game as too boring. I wondered how could people play such thing for long hours. No more. I consider the game an excellent testing system. The next time I see a girl dealing with NP-hard algorithms and crying she can't hold up, I'll play the dirty trick:
New fresh roast student - "Excuse me, but this task it's too hard for me. It deals with a NP-hard task and I don't have the brains for it... Couldn't you give a more simple task for me?.."
Me - "Well go and play some Tetris while I think how we can ease your work..."
After a few hours - "Well what's the score? And you say NP-hard algorithms are too hard for you? You trying to solve a NP-hard algorithm for more than an hour! Cool, go and try to do the same with that task you don't have brains for..."
You people didn't catch it... The guy was afraid that the site could go down in one more of these terrible /. effects
Frankly, this guy is just an Internet street singer... No offense. Some street singers are pretty good and even some had sometimes a chance to go into the "official" music arena.
But as with street singers, he's got trouble with the police patrols (in this case the uber-careful eBay). So they kick him, spread his meager cents all over the street and hint him to "get outta here". They don't wanna know if he's good or bad. They don't care for his music. They just wanna see the street looking antiseptic, wax shinny and without a single stain on it. For who? I don't know. Maybe they are worried about its nostalgic clients who dream to see the colors of the III Reich again?
Well, just remebered the time when journalist hunted and haunted me and my colleagues - the Y2K hype.
From that experience I learn a few things.
Journalists are in its large majority quite biased. They want the news. If they don't get hit, they start flaming.
Journalists frequently cry for freedom. But their freedom is not freedom of expression. For many of them "freedom of press" means "write whatever comes to your head".
Journalists really don't like that someone spoils their "hot news". If you don't wanna say a word they cry "censorship", if you disagree with them, they cry "propaganda". If you send them somewhere else, they cry "attacks on press".
Journalists love to write. Even if they have no material. One colleague was attacked by a series of stupid questions, sounding like Armageddon predictions. He answered "that's hype, nothing else". The journalist managed to produce an half page comment of this phrase in one newspaper telling that experts were blind and could not see what was going on.
Journalists believe they can be experts in everything. When they write about hackers or computers, most texts are more fantastic than most Holywood blockbusters.
Not all journalists are like these ones. But the sensationalist mass is the majority. During Y2K, I saw only one guy who had the head a little bit on his shoulders. Everyone else, some 6-7 idiots, were always trying to get the best prediction for Armageddon.
Ooops except one. The jerk seemed to have get pissed on something and wrote a stupid tale that the city where I live had the honour to have the NNth most dangerous hacker in the world. And told everyone who this "mega-dangerous" hacker was in some popular newspaper.. Till now people ask me about this...
So, people, don't take too close to heart this list... Frankly, I know a little bit about journalistics in some 10-11 countries and I'm terribly admired about their positions in this list.
That apathy and contentment is a real danger to democracy, because it means no one is protecting the democratic rights.
One of the founder of the US did remark this danger. Besides this is a universal danger. Such weaknesses were frequently the result why such guys like Stalin or Hitler came into power... And that's what is sending Europe again into the cauldron of extremism. That's also the danger that may turn the US into another major war in the middle future.
Well things are not bright in Russia. But putting Russia worser than certain neighbors is too much. I have been in some of these places and I sincerly consider that the report is too biased. They forget that some countries with "freedom" higher than Russia journalists are killed or have a puppet press that serves the wishes of local authorities. Besides, Gregory Pasko's case is quite scandalous. Yes, he was a journalist. But he was also an officer and he was sentenced for sharing too much military information with a foreign organisation. Besides these guys forget that most charges were dropped out and that this case still didn't end completely. Yes, it is a very dirty, but also a complex case. Did Pasko overweighted his duties as an officer while trying to to fulfill a citizen duty? That's what everyone asks about.
Has Russia Freedom of Information? It has - too much and too little at the same time. You can hear a journalist asking very hard questions to the President about the corrupt behaviour of the authorities on Tuva Republic. At the same time you see these same authorities trying to shut ip this dissident voice. On one side you see oligarchs, through their media,crying foul that there is no Freedom of Information. At the same time you see these media brainwashing everyone that they found data against Putin. The local TVs are controlled by local elites, but they are several and in every critical moment you see them fighting against each other and blackmailing the opponent.
Russia's Freedom of Information is a huge mastodon washing machine. It looks much like Alexis de Tocqueville memories on how the US lived in the XIX century.
And one more example on how information goes quite uncontrolled. Many of you may know that right now in Moscow there is a big hostage crisis going on. Well the channels gave people a chance to speak and now it is quite clear that some gave too much information over the screen... And it occurs that terrorists are also watching TV...
Frankly, I don't know what level should be put to
Ok people. Those of you who say they cannot make money out of GPL. Are you something different from IBM? Are you something different from thousands of small developers and sysadmins like me? What in GPL really HAMPERS you from making some money? Technical hurdles? Where I'm in this world for nearly 10 years and I have not seen professionals crying foul from any GNU tool that would really HAMPER any chance to create a new program. Well Linux is an example of this, isn't it? Frankly I don't see where Linux may hamper you on having a decent revenue. And I don't see IBM filling bankruptcy in the next years.
You can't charge for that piece of code? Correct. Why would someone give you a 200Kb of software to help you write 2Kbs and sell the whole thing for $2000? Well that's one of the things GPL is about - don't be a parasite. And do not try to stop other people doing something with those 200Kb. Moreover, when this 200Kbs may be good taxpayer dollars.
On what concerns what should a state do with licenses. I believe that a "just GPL" license is bad. I do believe in the right of an author, or intellectual property owner to rationally choose the best form to share its product with someone else. A state may either choose GPL, BSD or an 100% commercial license, depending on conditions and circumstances that lead to the creation of the product and its potential use. However we are talking here about cyber security, right? That's what is the news about. What is the usefulness of kick out GPL from this field? I see one and only one reason. To hold up information on new security technologies. Is anyone trying to make a slippery move to make "security through obscurity" an official ideology of the US? If so, one day you americans don't blame the rest of the world for being better than you, and don't ever claim that we betrayed you, somehow. The treason is right behind your backs.
There was Corporate America. And people enjoyed to remark this. And there was a company that claimed that Linux, Open Source, GPL and Co. were a treat to Capitalism... And there was a lot of FUD, among some people, that all this was the same thing as Communism, if not worst. And they raised Corporate America in a crusade against the Spectrum. And they said: buy only true corporate software. And Corporate America felt that it would be easier to deal with a corporation, rather than risking its health and wealth with something that sounded like some old enemies calls.
Now Corporate America is eating the fruits of its short vision and its lack of support to venture capitalists, small developers and a little more freedom for people. Soon, we may see that Corporate America is no more. Welcome to M$ America.
To Doom, Quake, CounterStrike watchers...
If you see that the player does not lie his hands on the table, then, don't come close. The administration takes no responsability for black eyes, broken teeth, bruises and other trauma that may advent from the fact that the player uses airborne devices...
Only to the electronics of a particular receiver that has the correct encryption and chipping key will it seem like anything else.
Interesting idea... And it could be quite truthful if a general path of progress forced civilizations to choose methods of communication with signals nearing background noises or pure white noise...
Maybe it is would be a good idea to change the project into "Hack@SETI". However this could be dangerous. Imagine an orange being carrying two antennas, glasses, dressed on a Yuppie-like fashion and crying: I'm Bell Gadzes from Migrozoft Conglomeration, Red Moon, Vaxinton System, United Empires!.. You violated our DTCA (Digital Trillion Copyright Act)!! You will be assimilated!!!
Their usual name is Utopia.
They may differ in ideologies and objectives but the large majority ends quite badly.
The most ancient Utopia seems to have been the half-mytical Atlantis.
The most well known Utopia of Ancient Times was Sparta.
Roman Empire died to a religious Utopia of Armageddon and Salvation.
In Middle Ages there were several Utopias like the Albigois of Provence, the Templars.
Mongol Empire was an Utopia.
American Revolutions nearly started several Utopia States, some of its remains echo till now in the US and, partially, in South America.
Utah was pratically an Utopia in its first years.
French Revolution was a pure Utopia State.
October Revolution was the biggest, largest and most monumental Utopia ever.
Nazi Germany and several other regimes were Utopias.
Singapore still heirs a lot of its Utopia foundation.
Apart of this. There is certain data that points to the fact that Maya could be an Utopia. Also some strange tales of a certain ancient kingdom in what is now Spain point also to an Utopia. Many eurasian tales point to vanished city-states and countries that remind a lot Utopias, ex. the Huns, the Assassins, Turan, Shambala, etc.
What was the problem of these Utopias? They could have started well and with clear ideals. However, dogmatism and fanatism overcome. They tried to remain up to their ideals no matter the conditions and realities. Some Utopias vanished quite fast and they couldn't even manage to leave anything for history. Others could live for some time, basing its force on the economical power and resources of a nation. However the large majority ended tragically. Almost all Utopias tend to isolate themselves from everything that doesn't fit their dogmas. On one point of their History, the balance between their ideals and environment was so unequal that they were simply crunched to dust. Among them, there are only a few structures that manage to survive as they started to interact with the world, ex. the Jewish-Christian-Islamic canonical religions, the modern communist parties, The United States of America, The French Republic, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China and several others. For some this may look as if a big part of our world is Utopia based. It is. However, they are just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of Utopias that Mankind rised.
A. I am not the only admin in my workplace.
B. The majority of admins comes from old damn good Win9x times.
C. This majority has a tendency to make things MazDie alike.
D. So they put autofs even in some major server.
E. I have can only two hands, two eyes and two ears (well something more but that's superfluous here).
F. I have one head only. And my head is frequently on heatsinker.
G. Certain distros love features. Like giving supermount from start. But if its not there, the guys in B. do everything to put it.
So what do you think? I know... "#brain$ rm -rf nerves ; echo "YOU LAMERZ!!!" ; cat "Why *NIX doesn't autofs from start - 10th edition""
Very unfortunate example of yours. The CD is trashed, someone inserts that piece of trash into this super-feature automount. However, this dodo, instead of checking that dumb CD, he goes take some coffee. In seconds, the machine starts to sloooooooooow doooown as the dumbish CD-reader kicks more and more interrupts into the system. True story. I drunk his cup of coffee while he ran away to KICK THAT DAMN CD OUTTA THE SERVER 'CAUSE IT IS STUCK INSIDE!!!
Other example. Mr. A. H. Wannabeahacker has an account in some machine. He inserts the super-pupper CD - CrACkZ, hACKz and SuXXs. Plays a little bit and turns the server into a washing machine. Another true story. Those who work at University computer classes may have seen this a few times...
So people. I know that the autofs features are pretty cool. I do use them. But in user workstations ONLY! The lack of automount in a desktop station is a distro problem not a kernel one. All the basic infrastructure for automount is in the kernel already. However there should be some more tweaking on it, as certain types of ZIPs, CDs and HDDs may seriously influence the performance of the kernel while being mounted. It would be great to see some some kind of double checking of errors so that certain cascades wouldn't happen.
Well, this is what some people really wish:
.NET
Internet Explorer.
GUI.
The Eternal Flat Desktop for dummies.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Solitaire.
Palladin
WYSINAWYG
WYGINAWYW
Easter Eggs
Make desktop "user ready". Forget the flame.
Forget the bugs, claim the features.
Add 100Kb EULA into the kernel itself.
Sell it and yourself to Bill Gates.
Rename it to Windows.
Sell it for $400 and threaten everyone who will not follow you.
Write a small text, anonymously authored - "Why I switched from Linux to Windows" and claim how your customers are deeply satisfied.
Are you from Mars? There are two versions of automount in Linux and there is something called "supermount". But if you use Linux for servers, then you are deeply wrong if you put these things into action. The automount feature is not embedded to Linux just for that reason. A good secured server should in no way give a chance to automount third party media. Only the admin should do it and he shall have a chance to do it flexibly and correctly. Believe me, that this is the true way of administration. Maybe where you work people may think it is too bad that Linux doesn't automount every piece of crap that may either trash the system or give a chance for information leaks. But, on my years of sysadmin I consider that this is one of the best features not only of Linux but of the whole *NIX family.
As this kind of lawsuit concerns the life of this company on the Matrix, this link may give some info on how this company ran up till now:
Wayback on SearchKing
This guy is wrong. Deeply and completely wrong. Even if his ideas are technically achievable, he will be a step nearer death and destruction rather then achieving its goal of Eternity.
The ways he tries to achieve this goal are, by the most, static. It will be harder to modify a detail or change a component of such organism. Besides, such technologies are by too weak to external factors and demand much more energy inputs than a usual organic carbon-rich body. While it is hard for Nature, under Earth's energy balance, to create things with sources other than carbon, many organisms failed or were kicked into Evolution sideroads. Why? Because all these "solutions" were quite far from optimal. Do you know that octopus don't have hemoglobin but a magnese-based protein to fix oxygen in the blood? Or that there is a small vermin with teeth carrying more than 80% of copper? These things are exclusions, sometimes aberrations that the average conditions of Earth's habitat cannot support. These things lived isolated, in particular areas and cannot leave their environment.
Now how this comes into our problem here? Well this guy forgets more than 4 billion years of evolution and kicks us into a completely aritficial organism. But this organism lives uder what conditions? Human conditions! It is we humans that care for these silicon beings, model them according to our wishes and needs, we feed them with energy and data. Besides, till now not even Deep Fritz could approach the sensibility, reasoning and flexibility of a human. This is a machine that devores energy, that makes milliards of permutations to overcome the speed of the human brain in one single task, that is supported and developed by thousands of engineers. And someone considers this the Future? Give me a break. Dinos were a lot smarter and more autonomous.
IF something like Deep Fritz will be left alone on Earth it will meet something that even humans barely know about. The law that can be behind Thermodynamics (not the Second Principle, that thing is probably the consequence of this law) and which some biologists have been studying for several years. It is a law about how things interact. In a single system, in every moment there can be milliards of interactions between its components. Some of these interactions are antagonists, one can be successful if its antagonist gets weakened somehow. The state of equilibrium is merely a situation when these interactions meet something looking like an energetic "agreement" among themselves. However, this does not mean that interactions may disappear at all. Frequently some just turn more weak but more numerous as other components of the system "repel" these interactions, because of the more stable state they are in (this is where some people see the appearence of Entropy). However these stable states are not eternal. They may change globally or locally, and then, all other interactions may try to invade te castles of stability.
Why all this confusing bla-bla-bla? Well get a human and a machine. Make the human to improve the machine too look much like his mind. Now pick the human and shoot him, leave the machine alone in Earth. How long the machine will be capable to survive?
Even if someone achieves the feat to create an artificial mind much like ours, he will be only half-way. This minfd will need to be able to have a rational meal, to run from dangers, and to have a chance to go to toilet from time to time. Besides, this mind will have the big need to reproduce itself. Alone in the Universe does not give good chances for eternity...
So these guys pretend to be above God and/or Nature and pretend ownership of their Creation...
Interesting to see this thing coming from traditionally religious Utah... Is anyone tryng to create a new religion of The Chosen who can afford the Patented Creation that offers the Misteries of Human Genes capable to prolong Patented Life and improve Patented Health just for a miserable sacrifice of a few thousands? While The Patented Infidels will be forced to avoid touching their Patented Ills so they can meet their Patented Destiny, as they don't have a penny to pay the humble sacrifice, that is the wish of being humans?
Well tovarish, your talk sounds good for a trotskist agent of the dirty, shadowy voices of Imperialism and Capitalism. However, your voice reflects you capitalist grounds.
It is not Top Level Directorate but High Commissariate, Central Commitee, and Higher Congress. You forgot one C in CCCP (Soyuz Sovetskikh Socialistichekikh Respublik). It is not the "we are Voice of The Peoples" but we are "The People". On what concerns "largest party of politics", do you really think that we all speak English so badly? It's "largest political party".
And now sorry for the english speaking fellows but this guy tried to play so well on grumbling its Engrus that he made a very silly mistake. So directly to him:
Vy ponyali shto napisali po angliiskii? Materniui Zemlyu!.. Rodina-Mat budet "Motherland" mat vashu.
This is not new and it didn't appear yesterday. The sensitive but unclassified data has been around since the end of WWII. Well, it was here before that, but the mood turned crazy after this time. There have been lots of incidents where certain organisations or people used and abused the tactics of information control. In certain cases the incident ended in brutal assassinations of journalists, experts and other people. Such incidents could be frequently seen in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the 60's, 70's and 80's. No I am not talking about wars and coups, but about the secret experiments in certain countries, the secret american base in ex-Zaire, the defoliation in Vietnam, certain aspects of CIA activities in Central America during the Contra's War. We can even note the victims of a few nuclear incidents in ex-USSR, most of them, results of experiments. While a good part of these activities had a top-secret level, other details could not be covered by secrecy (unless you consider people like the Agent Orange victims top secret items). However, agencies tried hard to cover its tracks. Sometimes, in a very harsh manner.
But even Europe was not exempt of such situation. There is a mistery story about some major soviet expert on nuclear war that suddenly vanished in South Europe after a major scientific congress on the effects of Nuclear Winter. For years, no one and nobody could guess where this guy went to. He vaporised in such way, that both soviet and westerners constantly blamed each other for his vanishment. Some may think this was another Cold War incident. However, this guy seems to had worked on a more perfect model to represent the consequences of a major nuclear war. This work was not secret nor confidential and it seems that he was about to show it to everyone in that congress. However someone made him disappear before he could do it.
I wonder what will happen if the vague term "sensitive" becomes an official member of the secrecy levels. We could see such thing like: "Well we could tell you the number of victims of unsuccessful nuclear experiment but that's highly sensitive information."
Well there is one thing that some are ignoring. Apart of nostalgia and other problems, like lots of mail users still being in .su domain, there is another argument. Some people want to use .su for CIS sites.
Many years ago, one of my colleagues fell into a weird situation. He was quite good in Assembler and wrote some quite long program. When he finished, he said that he doubts that the program could work. "I should have done some checks before finishing it..." He compiles the program, gets ready for some long debugging and... the program works... He stares at the screen.
"Something is wrong here..."
"What?" I ask.
"The program works...".
"Well it should doesn't it?".
"No, it shouldn't, no one can write Assembler in such volume and avoid errors..."
"But does the program give the right result?"
"Yes, but that's impossible! I nearly guessed how to do it. How can it work?.."
So he starts checking the program. Finds nothing. Debugs it, all seems to work. Then he starts to doubt that the results are correct. So he makes two three checks by hand. Then he writes a small segment of the program and things go nuts.He gets back to the whole program and starts debugging it, step by step. In the end, and after taking four times more what took him to create the program, he approaches me with some clear relief.
"There were errors..."
"So the result was wrong..."
"No, the result was absolutely right!"
"!?!"
"Well, the fact is that I did one offset wrong but in other section of the program, another error in made returned the values to normal. That's why the program worked fine..."
How many such programs exist?