Very tricky, indeed. This is harder than it appears at first glance. Anyone can set off a time release bomb that blows it's wad, propelling a ballistic projectile into the air, but it is a bit harder to either: [ (1) stage a series of rockets to create equilibrium with gravity or (2) use a single rocket with a controllable thrust. ] But then you have the problem of attitude adjustment (keeping the rocket's business end pointed at the ground without wind resistance/fins keeping the mechanism pointing straight) and horizontal movement, also while keeping attitude adjustment in check.
On top of that, add 25Kg of mass. Not an easy trick at all.
Don't kid yourself. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that my BB gun had to be the best, most accurate, and most deadly gun in the world. Of course, I never actually did any real comparisons...
The fact of the matter is, it does not fit the psychy of the average virus writer to go after Mac... Virus writers are after the most bang for their effort, and it logically follows that WIntel products will be the brunt of their efforts (in the same line, I doubt you will find much graphitti on the INSIDE of water towers, even if graphitti artists could get in), and second, most Mac users use a Mac so that they don't HAVE to be technical, so writing a virus is out of their scope in the first place.
True, to a point. The open source community is looking at Linux with the specific intent to make it better. There are thousands of people, on the other hand, that are foaming at the mouth (many who also are in the open source community) spending lots of time pouring over Microsoft products, just dying to be the next guy who can say "nyanyanyanyanyanya, Microsoft sucks!" and expose another weakness. The difference is that Linux fundamentally improves feature and stability wise, but not necessarily as much security wise. Sure, bugs are caught, but I assure you, 10000 times the effort is put into finding holes in Microsoft's code. Of course, the logical conclusion of this practice is that eventually, with all the help, Microsoft will truly be a very secure operating system, which is exactly opposite of the intent, I am sure.
It isn't so much that there aren't as many security holes in OSX and Linux (as well as other OS's), but that there aren't the hoardes of people gunning to find them like there are in Microsoft (aka the evil empire) products.
diesel fuel would be a better choice. Doesnt go rancid, is not (very) volitile, isn't as messy, and is equally non-conductive. Possibly a combination of diesel fuel and alcohol, even?
For Linux based DNS servers, Routers, reverse proxy web servers, proxy servers, and other mostly static disk content Linux based devices --- boot from Linux, give you the ability to change on the fly (unlike live CD's), and be cheap and effective in most scenarios (as long, of course, as you kept/var and/tmp in a ramdrive to prevent overusing your flash media (save both volumes to a.tgz and store them to flash at shutdown, and restore to ramdrive at bootup))
It is really not. I can bring a level one support person into our organization and have them create/delete/modify accounts in an instant. I can also train in a single day an individual to install a BDC in the field anywhere, and not need to do anything but type in a one line command, which is not even that long. this is a real and useable solution, I just need to find the time to document all of it and make it available, as there is a lot of scripting in the background making this all work smooth.
I would love to know what I should post to show what we have done. I wrote the majority of the code, and it works so well, and deploys in minutes (I have a BDC generation script that will take a blank computer and create a working LDAP enabled BDC and join it to the Samba Domain in less than 15 minutes.)
We use Via EPIA Eden chipset motherboards with dual nics (the Router uses the dual nics, and I also use it on the file servers for hardware consistency). The motherboard only pulls 10 watts of power.
Our company has 9000 employees on payroll, but only 600 actual computer users. Everyone in the company logs into a SAMBA domain. We have done some really, great things with SAMBA deployment, and router deployment. I have a script that generates a router as well (just generates ipsec.conf, ipsec.secrets, rules, policies, and init in the shorewall directory, dhcpd.conf, ipcfg_eth0, ipcfg_eth1, and network in the sysconfig directory, it generates). I can demonstrate everything that I have done and written, and *ahem* never signed an intellectual property agreement of any kind with my employer.
In other words, I own it all, and would love to give it back to the open source community, as I think it would make SAMBA a seriously competitive alternative to Microsoft. windows file servers
I use GoSA as a web based interface to all users and group memberships of the users. EVERYONE should check out GoSA who intendes on using SAMBA over a large group of users (if implementing with LDAP).
The coolest thing is the auto login script generation -- you simply add a user to a group in gosa, and it automatically (if you are logging on to that server) create you a login script based on group membership.
I will try to paste up the script that calls the scripts that generates (ran from a rootpreexec in smb.conf)
I cannot post, throws a lameness filter, so I cant paste code... oh well.
anyway, if I get a decent response from this, and it seems appropriate, I would be glad to demonstrate some things/code. I am just too busy holding this company together as head/only sysadmin/level 3 support guy.
I run a Samba 3 / OpenLDAP network that spans fifty branches in twelve states, and I am here to tell you that once we got rid of Microsoft, our (systems) support problems went through the floor. The Microsoft clients still suck just as bad, though. By the way, all of our routers are Linux based (Freeswan, netfilter/IP2Route, Snort), as well, and for wireless we run Sveasoft's Linux based software on Linksys (Cisco) Wrt54gs's and Wap54g's. I could not be more happy (or late night phone-call free).
anyway, I think that there are two ofset computers, and that the first "weighted table" computer considers all of the "emotional" weights of all of the subparts of what we are currently considering and then delivers up an overall "score" to our forward conscious that sort of guides us forward and directs our behavior. If we were to put these weights (instinct) and make plenty of room for learned weights, a robot could begin to behave like us. Of course, we, growing up, have our preloads change with age. When you were 8, I did not like girls, but when I was 16, they were all I wanted -- is a perfect example. Lots of other things change, as well, to better our ability to fill our role in the lifecycle of a human -- evolution preset this.
Isaac Asimov always talked about his 3 laws, but I say the truly most "sacred" part of a robot is his preloaded tables...the robot's instinct...much more than 3 simple laws. This is the thing that we should never be able to touch, neither in robots, nor in ourselves, though I think most of us wish we could........
You know, when we think of robots, and their march to approach what we consider and "AI" to use a way over cliche-ish term, what qualities would it be that would make us consider them "intelligent"? What is it about humanity that we consider is the essence of life (as we see it), in and of itself? I have spent many years on and off thinking on this, and this is not the forum to speak on it all, but I will say a few things that I think are important.
First, I have to say that what we consider to be intelligence probably has very little to do with intelligence itself, and more about how we as humans evaluate situations and prepare to make decisions, and then act on those decisions. A great deal of this behavior is not intelligence as we see it at all, but pre-loaded and instinctual responses that we consider normal to a variety of situations based on past experiences that lie on a weighted table that is fed to our consciousness via a sort of offset computer in our head that quickly indexes emotional and instinctual values, and feeds us a feeling that makes us either want to do something, or want to avoid something. These responses can either be purly instinctual (the feeling of extreme discomfort when we see someone who is vomiting -- nature says we should avoid this at all cost), to the purly learned (don't touch a hot stove). Furthermore, we have a third offset computer in our head that quickly compares images we see with our eyes, and very quickly responds with a pointer in our head to the first offset computer that lets it know to inform our forward consciousness about a potential danger. This is an evolved computer that was an extreme necessity...if there was a tiger somewhat camoflaged in some bushes, our brains must be able to have an edge in quickly comparing that image to all of the images in its database, and then quickly determine if it is a danger and inform our weighted table processor to deliver our forward thought a feeling of extreme discomfort. If we were to build a robot with these set of instructions, set up basically like this, it would, I feel, act very much like us, and behave in such a way that we would feel them to be human, and alive. There isn't really all that much else to humanity, or at least in my opinion. Love, hate, envy, jealousy, hunger, pain, loss, fear, pleasure, eroticism, all of these can be explained by this, and very simply at that.
I support among other people, a marketing staff. When people are interested in buying things, they may only send one email. That one email is all you are going to get, and not getting it is the same as not getting the sale. I know the marketing staff is extremely skeptical about any sort of spam filtering, as they are always concerned about missing important emails that may lead to sales, and ultimately, revinue. I don't know how this fits in with spam filtering, but suggesting that all important email is followed up with a call is not true. And ask any CEO--sales are the most important thing to a company. It doesn't matter if you have the best thing in the world, if you can't sell it, it isn't worth anything.
Adding on, you would have to secure the directional antenna to the side of the rifle (a friend of mine asked me how a rifle would help after reading my post.. I thought I would clarify). That way when you have the phone in your crosshairs, the antenna is also pointed directly at the phone....
Using the sniper rifle's scope to finely track the location of the phone, and a very, very directional antenna (parabolic) to then capitalize on the parallel incoming waves from the phone's signal? (much other interference would be limited by the polarization effect of the directional antenna...)
Sounds interesting..
It would be a great thing if all of the people who are pirating one day decided to make a point and start sending stuff through UPS.. would they shut down UPS? Can't do US Mail, that would be mail fraud.. but how about Federal Express? What if someone figured out how to do it via Email.. emailing little bits of files around... would they ban Email? The concept is absurd. Some of these P2P softwares are nice, and provide a great way for not-so-well-funded sites to get out valuable information without having to have a ton of backbone to support it. It is stupid to blame a piece of software for the crime, when the piece of software itself is nothing more than an abstract assortment of magnetized/demagnetized positions on a plate of metal spinning around in a rectangular box.
I believe it was several several years ago that they had "improved" on the heart by creating a device that worked without a conventional pulse.. everything hooked to it died.. It seems some of our body systems require a pulse for regulation??? I am remembering this from quite a number of years back, but it seems that I recall that this is why they can't keep people on the external artificial heart/kidney too long, because it is a constant flow, and doesn't replicate a pulse. I know I remember this, but I don't know if and/or how we got around it to make it work now.
If it wasn't for the guys buying the new hardware and driving the benchmark ever forward, you would still be paying top dollar for old equipment. God bless the bench markers is what I say, and keep them stuffed as full of stats and framerates and clockspeeds as possible so I can keep getting cheap new hardware for my machines.
I think that this falls under the category of "anything worth encrypting is worth encrypting well" category. If you are doing it for pure educational sake, use whatever you want. But if you are charged with a purpose of keeping some information private, then it is your responsibility to use an encryption method that is sufficient to keep it private.
True that, unless you planning to run GRE tunnels over IPSEC, (add to that snort) which I do, and have.. needs lots of memory, and your dusty box downstairs won't do it, at least it won't do it easily
This would make a cool linux router box.. diskless, of course, and on a live cd/dvd... =)
A little netfilter, ip2r4oute, freeswan, shorewall, snort -- shake vigorously and "voila" ---- Router...
What if the website where you got the virus was set up by a kid, or some high school students, or just a hobbiest? You can't sue them, or expect them to do anything... they probably haven't looked at their page in months. And people don't pay for web content in most cases, so how can you expect a guarantee for it? And, would you really want government inspectors coming to your business, going through your personal web pages to see if they are properly protected? Would you want to have to submit them paperwork saying that you had taken proper precautions? Nobody wants that. Keep the web free and available to anyone with a voice, for all. I am against ANY form of government conrol over the web (except for stuff like kiddyporn and other such garbage). But this is just my opinion.
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Very tricky, indeed. This is harder than it appears at first glance. Anyone can set off a time release bomb that blows it's wad, propelling a ballistic projectile into the air, but it is a bit harder to either: [ (1) stage a series of rockets to create equilibrium with gravity or (2) use a single rocket with a controllable thrust. ] But then you have the problem of attitude adjustment (keeping the rocket's business end pointed at the ground without wind resistance/fins keeping the mechanism pointing straight) and horizontal movement, also while keeping attitude adjustment in check. On top of that, add 25Kg of mass. Not an easy trick at all.
Don't kid yourself. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that my BB gun had to be the best, most accurate, and most deadly gun in the world. Of course, I never actually did any real comparisons...
The fact of the matter is, it does not fit the psychy of the average virus writer to go after Mac... Virus writers are after the most bang for their effort, and it logically follows that WIntel products will be the brunt of their efforts (in the same line, I doubt you will find much graphitti on the INSIDE of water towers, even if graphitti artists could get in), and second, most Mac users use a Mac so that they don't HAVE to be technical, so writing a virus is out of their scope in the first place.
True, to a point. The open source community is looking at Linux with the specific intent to make it better. There are thousands of people, on the other hand, that are foaming at the mouth (many who also are in the open source community) spending lots of time pouring over Microsoft products, just dying to be the next guy who can say "nyanyanyanyanyanya, Microsoft sucks!" and expose another weakness. The difference is that Linux fundamentally improves feature and stability wise, but not necessarily as much security wise. Sure, bugs are caught, but I assure you, 10000 times the effort is put into finding holes in Microsoft's code. Of course, the logical conclusion of this practice is that eventually, with all the help, Microsoft will truly be a very secure operating system, which is exactly opposite of the intent, I am sure.
It isn't so much that there aren't as many security holes in OSX and Linux (as well as other OS's), but that there aren't the hoardes of people gunning to find them like there are in Microsoft (aka the evil empire) products.
diesel fuel would be a better choice. Doesnt go rancid, is not (very) volitile, isn't as messy, and is equally non-conductive. Possibly a combination of diesel fuel and alcohol, even?
For Linux based DNS servers, Routers, reverse proxy web servers, proxy servers, and other mostly static disk content Linux based devices --- boot from Linux, give you the ability to change on the fly (unlike live CD's), and be cheap and effective in most scenarios (as long, of course, as you kept /var and /tmp in a ramdrive to prevent overusing your flash media (save both volumes to a .tgz and store them to flash at shutdown, and restore to ramdrive at bootup))
It is really not. I can bring a level one support person into our organization and have them create/delete/modify accounts in an instant. I can also train in a single day an individual to install a BDC in the field anywhere, and not need to do anything but type in a one line command, which is not even that long. this is a real and useable solution, I just need to find the time to document all of it and make it available, as there is a lot of scripting in the background making this all work smooth.
I would love to know what I should post to show what we have done. I wrote the majority of the code, and it works so well, and deploys in minutes (I have a BDC generation script that will take a blank computer and create a working LDAP enabled BDC and join it to the Samba Domain in less than 15 minutes.)
We use Via EPIA Eden chipset motherboards with dual nics (the Router uses the dual nics, and I also use it on the file servers for hardware consistency). The motherboard only pulls 10 watts of power.
Our company has 9000 employees on payroll, but only 600 actual computer users. Everyone in the company logs into a SAMBA domain. We have done some really, great things with SAMBA deployment, and router deployment. I have a script that generates a router as well (just generates ipsec.conf, ipsec.secrets, rules, policies, and init in the shorewall directory, dhcpd.conf, ipcfg_eth0, ipcfg_eth1, and network in the sysconfig directory, it generates). I can demonstrate everything that I have done and written, and *ahem* never signed an intellectual property agreement of any kind with my employer.
In other words, I own it all, and would love to give it back to the open source community, as I think it would make SAMBA a seriously competitive alternative to Microsoft. windows file servers
I use GoSA as a web based interface to all users and group memberships of the users. EVERYONE should check out GoSA who intendes on using SAMBA over a large group of users (if implementing with LDAP).
https://gosa.gonicus.de/
The coolest thing is the auto login script generation -- you simply add a user to a group in gosa, and it automatically (if you are logging on to that server) create you a login script based on group membership. I will try to paste up the script that calls the scripts that generates (ran from a rootpreexec in smb.conf)
I cannot post, throws a lameness filter, so I cant paste code... oh well.
anyway, if I get a decent response from this, and it seems appropriate, I would be glad to demonstrate some things/code. I am just too busy holding this company together as head/only sysadmin/level 3 support guy.
I run a Samba 3 / OpenLDAP network that spans fifty branches in twelve states, and I am here to tell you that once we got rid of Microsoft, our (systems) support problems went through the floor. The Microsoft clients still suck just as bad, though. By the way, all of our routers are Linux based (Freeswan, netfilter/IP2Route, Snort), as well, and for wireless we run Sveasoft's Linux based software on Linksys (Cisco) Wrt54gs's and Wap54g's. I could not be more happy (or late night phone-call free).
Been there, and I feel ya.
I should have previewed.....
anyway, I think that there are two ofset computers, and that the first "weighted table" computer considers all of the "emotional" weights of all of the subparts of what we are currently considering and then delivers up an overall "score" to our forward conscious that sort of guides us forward and directs our behavior. If we were to put these weights (instinct) and make plenty of room for learned weights, a robot could begin to behave like us. Of course, we, growing up, have our preloads change with age. When you were 8, I did not like girls, but when I was 16, they were all I wanted -- is a perfect example. Lots of other things change, as well, to better our ability to fill our role in the lifecycle of a human -- evolution preset this. Isaac Asimov always talked about his 3 laws, but I say the truly most "sacred" part of a robot is his preloaded tables...the robot's instinct...much more than 3 simple laws. This is the thing that we should never be able to touch, neither in robots, nor in ourselves, though I think most of us wish we could........
You know, when we think of robots, and their march to approach what we consider and "AI" to use a way over cliche-ish term, what qualities would it be that would make us consider them "intelligent"? What is it about humanity that we consider is the essence of life (as we see it), in and of itself? I have spent many years on and off thinking on this, and this is not the forum to speak on it all, but I will say a few things that I think are important.
First, I have to say that what we consider to be intelligence probably has very little to do with intelligence itself, and more about how we as humans evaluate situations and prepare to make decisions, and then act on those decisions. A great deal of this behavior is not intelligence as we see it at all, but pre-loaded and instinctual responses that we consider normal to a variety of situations based on past experiences that lie on a weighted table that is fed to our consciousness via a sort of offset computer in our head that quickly indexes emotional and instinctual values, and feeds us a feeling that makes us either want to do something, or want to avoid something. These responses can either be purly instinctual (the feeling of extreme discomfort when we see someone who is vomiting -- nature says we should avoid this at all cost), to the purly learned (don't touch a hot stove). Furthermore, we have a third offset computer in our head that quickly compares images we see with our eyes, and very quickly responds with a pointer in our head to the first offset computer that lets it know to inform our forward consciousness about a potential danger. This is an evolved computer that was an extreme necessity...if there was a tiger somewhat camoflaged in some bushes, our brains must be able to have an edge in quickly comparing that image to all of the images in its database, and then quickly determine if it is a danger and inform our weighted table processor to deliver our forward thought a feeling of extreme discomfort. If we were to build a robot with these set of instructions, set up basically like this, it would, I feel, act very much like us, and behave in such a way that we would feel them to be human, and alive. There isn't really all that much else to humanity, or at least in my opinion. Love, hate, envy, jealousy, hunger, pain, loss, fear, pleasure, eroticism, all of these can be explained by this, and very simply at that.
I support among other people, a marketing staff. When people are interested in buying things, they may only send one email. That one email is all you are going to get, and not getting it is the same as not getting the sale. I know the marketing staff is extremely skeptical about any sort of spam filtering, as they are always concerned about missing important emails that may lead to sales, and ultimately, revinue. I don't know how this fits in with spam filtering, but suggesting that all important email is followed up with a call is not true. And ask any CEO--sales are the most important thing to a company. It doesn't matter if you have the best thing in the world, if you can't sell it, it isn't worth anything.
Adding on, you would have to secure the directional antenna to the side of the rifle (a friend of mine asked me how a rifle would help after reading my post.. I thought I would clarify). That way when you have the phone in your crosshairs, the antenna is also pointed directly at the phone....
Using the sniper rifle's scope to finely track the location of the phone, and a very, very directional antenna (parabolic) to then capitalize on the parallel incoming waves from the phone's signal? (much other interference would be limited by the polarization effect of the directional antenna...) Sounds interesting..
It would be a great thing if all of the people who are pirating one day decided to make a point and start sending stuff through UPS.. would they shut down UPS? Can't do US Mail, that would be mail fraud.. but how about Federal Express? What if someone figured out how to do it via Email.. emailing little bits of files around... would they ban Email? The concept is absurd. Some of these P2P softwares are nice, and provide a great way for not-so-well-funded sites to get out valuable information without having to have a ton of backbone to support it. It is stupid to blame a piece of software for the crime, when the piece of software itself is nothing more than an abstract assortment of magnetized/demagnetized positions on a plate of metal spinning around in a rectangular box.
PC Games are much better for me.
I believe it was several several years ago that they had "improved" on the heart by creating a device that worked without a conventional pulse.. everything hooked to it died.. It seems some of our body systems require a pulse for regulation??? I am remembering this from quite a number of years back, but it seems that I recall that this is why they can't keep people on the external artificial heart/kidney too long, because it is a constant flow, and doesn't replicate a pulse. I know I remember this, but I don't know if and/or how we got around it to make it work now.
If it wasn't for the guys buying the new hardware and driving the benchmark ever forward, you would still be paying top dollar for old equipment. God bless the bench markers is what I say, and keep them stuffed as full of stats and framerates and clockspeeds as possible so I can keep getting cheap new hardware for my machines.
I am so happy to hear that. Windows 98 needs to go away.
I think that this falls under the category of "anything worth encrypting is worth encrypting well" category. If you are doing it for pure educational sake, use whatever you want. But if you are charged with a purpose of keeping some information private, then it is your responsibility to use an encryption method that is sufficient to keep it private.
True that, unless you planning to run GRE tunnels over IPSEC, (add to that snort) which I do, and have.. needs lots of memory, and your dusty box downstairs won't do it, at least it won't do it easily
This would make a cool linux router box.. diskless, of course, and on a live cd/dvd... =) A little netfilter, ip2r4oute, freeswan, shorewall, snort -- shake vigorously and "voila" ---- Router...
Ummmmmmmmmmm...that was weird
What if the website where you got the virus was set up by a kid, or some high school students, or just a hobbiest? You can't sue them, or expect them to do anything... they probably haven't looked at their page in months. And people don't pay for web content in most cases, so how can you expect a guarantee for it? And, would you really want government inspectors coming to your business, going through your personal web pages to see if they are properly protected? Would you want to have to submit them paperwork saying that you had taken proper precautions? Nobody wants that. Keep the web free and available to anyone with a voice, for all. I am against ANY form of government conrol over the web (except for stuff like kiddyporn and other such garbage). But this is just my opinion.